To Charleston, With Love

While this isn’t related to religious freedom, it is inspiring and worth noting. A Muslim community has:

“… managed to raise just under $30,000 – money that will be used to help up to seven churches that were destroyed in the American south in the aftermath of the Charleston shooting and the campaign against the Confederate flag.

“We have been overwhelmed by how generous people have been,” Ms Knight, 23, told The Independent. “We will stop it today…We will figure out how to distribute the money…”

In the aftermath of the Charleston shootings, the far right press tried to deflect attention from the racist motive of the shooter (terrorist, really), refocusing on everything from abortion to an apparent lack of enough guns. Most often, though, there was a claim that the church was targeted not because of its civil rights history and congregation, but because of hatred of Christianity — with some going so far as to claim it was a LGBT terrorism.

So in the wake of that, it’s encouraging to see something that bucks the usual narrative.